Iran denies Chalabi passed on classified intelligence

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Tehran: Iran has acknowledged it had regular contact with the Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi but rejected accusations that he passed on classified intelligence.

"We had continuous and permanent dialogue with Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi Governing Council," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza, Asefi told reporters. "But spying charges are unfounded and baseless. It's not true at all."

Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, has denied allegations he handed Iran sensitive information about the US occupation.

Iraqi police raided Chalabi's Baghdad home and the offices of the INC last week.

CBS television, quoting senior US officials, said Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite, personally handed Iranian intelligence sensitive information that could "get Americans killed". It quoted the officials as saying that the evidence against Chalabi was "rock solid".

Current and former US intelligence officials also said that Chalabi sent defectors to at least eight Western spy services before the war in an apparent effort to dupe them about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.

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US investigators now are seeking to determine if the effort was secretly supported by Iran's intelligence service to help persuade the Bush Administration to oust the Baghdad regime, Tehran's longtime enemy.

Officials said other evidence indicates that Chalabi's longtime intelligence chief furnished Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security with highly classified information on US troop movements, top-secret communications, plans of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, and other closely guarded material on US operations in Iraq.

It is not clear whether Iran had any role in using the INC to provide disinformation to the West. US officials say the INC may have been acting on its own when it sent out a steady stream of defectors between 1998 and 2003 with apparently co-ordinated claims about Baghdad's purported weapons of mass destruction.

A One US official confirmed that defectors from Chalabi's organisation had provided suspect information to numerous Western intelligence agencies.

"It's safe to say he tried to game the system," the official said. Few of the CIA's prewar judgements on Saddam's suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been proved accurate so far.

In Washington, the White House said President George Bush will share a "clear strategy" for guiding the future of Iraq in a speech tonight. The speech is intended to convince a world television audience that he is in command of the situation there.

On Saturday, Mr Bush suffered minor abrasions after falling off a mountain bike while cycling on his Texas ranch.